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Deer Isle Granite : Accidental Landscapes

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From the high ground in the Old Settlement Quarry, Stonington. A mile away a schooner ghosts through the Deer Isle Thoroughfare with Isle Au Haut standing behind.

Here we’re overlooking Webb Cove, and the staging area for granite blocks quarried on Crotch Island. The blocks are barged to the mainland, then removed by truck, one piece at a time .

Quarried erratics in rainwater pools. The quarry is an abandoned industrial site. In some places where organic material collect plants have started to colonize the sheets of rock. Slowly, vegetation will cover the granite, and some day, if it’s left alone, a forest will grow here.

Now we’re down below the Settlement Quarry heights next to Webb Cove. Derelict equipment rusts in the company of twenty ton blocks of Deer Isle Granite waiting to ship out.

Close up you might think these are intentional landscapes, a tending gardener standing off to the side. Step back, and you see what you see is chance, nature filling in any way it can.

Daisies and Deer Isle granite. The fleeting life of a flower and the staid, eternity of rock.

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About Tod Cheney

Tod writes about and photographs Maine from his home in Blue Hill. He is the author of "So I Can See The Trees, Travels in the Maine Woods and Baxter State Park" , available in bookstores or on Amazon as print or ebook.